Love Her or Lose Her

by Tessa Bailey

  Finally, he had to quit thanks to his screaming muscles and the two sets of hands that ripped the tool away. Dominic tried to get it back, but the whiskey he’d ingested the night before chose that moment to rise up and set his throat on fire. He barely made it outside before throwing up his breakfast in the grass behind the house.

  Dominic’s legs wanted to give out. He needed to sit down. But he’d already shown too much of his hand with everyone watching. No, he’d stand, thank you very much. He’d given in to the pain enough for today. Hell, enough for a year.

  As the rush of sound in his ears started to fade, Dominic heard himself laboring to breathe. Heard the passing traffic in the distance, the shift of the yellowing lawn around him. He wasn’t alone.

  “You’re welcome,” Dominic said, keeping his back turned to Stephen and Travis. “Saved you some work.”

  “Well, hold off next time, man. We like breaking shit, too,” Travis returned. A few moments ticked by. “Look, I was, uh . . . trying to make light of the situation earlier. Knowing you, I thought you’d appreciate me forgoing the one-armed, back-slapping man hug and an off-key rendition of ‘Kumbaya.’”

  Dominic cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’d rather die.”

  “But it has recently come to our attention . . .” Stephen said drily, “that you might actually need to talk.”

  “Nope.”

  “You sure?” Dominic glanced over at Travis, who toggled his eyebrows. “I’m willing to break my fiancé-fiancée confidentiality just this once.” A shadow crossed his face. “When Georgie broke up with me, I would have sawed off my fucking leg to find out what she ate for dinner. Or what she wore to bed—”

  “We get it,” Stephen said, exasperated.

  Travis held up both hands. “All I’m saying is . . . I have the goods.”

  Dominic ground his jaw together to keep from asking for information. Was Rosie upset? Did she give a shit at all? Was she still wearing those goddamn high heels that gave her blisters and made her hobble around the house at night? How many times had he hidden them in the back of her closet, hoping she’d put on the flat slipper-looking shoes instead?

  Was she eating dinner at a normal hour?

  Her boss at the department store used to let Rosie work straight through her legally required break, until Dominic had sent an email to the owner of the department store, not so subtly suggesting they review their employees’ right to meal breaks.

  The urge to pump Travis for the smallest, most trivial thing was so intense, Dominic had to bite down on his tongue. He was used to laying concrete over his impulses, but this was a test he couldn’t pass. The woman he was supposed to care for forever was gone, she didn’t love him anymore, and she’d felt something when another man showed interest. It might have been sheer feminine enjoyment, but he hated it with every fiber of his being. What if next time, the man asked her out on a date? Would she say yes even though they were still married?

  No.

  No, Rosie would never do that.

  The fact that she might want to say yes, however, was enough to strangle him.

  “Is she, um . . .” Dominic crossed his arms in a jerky movement. “She never warms her car up in the wintertime. She just gets in and drives. Someone has to wake up early and do it or it’ll ruin the transmission and she . . .” He shrugged. “She loves that stupid car, so . . .”

  Stephen stroked a hand down his beard, even though he didn’t have a beard. “My wife makes me do this, too. Get the heater running.”

  “Rosie doesn’t know I do it,” Dominic muttered.

  “What?” Stephen snorted. “Why miss out on those brownie points?”

  Dominic didn’t answer, but he noticed Travis scrutinizing him. “That’s really all you want to know? Who’s going to warm up her fucking Honda?” A beat passed. “I knew you were a piece of work, but you’re just swinging for the fences now.” He smoothed the cuff of his long-sleeve T-shirt. “And that’s my job.”

  Stephen made sure everyone witnessed his eye roll.

  “Here’s what I want to say.” Travis spread his stance and settled into it, like a team manager getting ready to level with his pitcher. “I might have implied before that I’m an expert on relationships now, but that was mainly to drive Stephen crazy.”

  “It’s working,” Stephen snapped at his childhood best friend. “Dick.”

  Travis grinned, but it dropped away just as fast. “Dominic, man. I just saw you tear down a wall single-handedly, so I’m taking a big risk saying this,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Get your shit together. Your wife just left. I don’t know anything about your marriage, which is weird, because you’re so damn chatty.” He paused to smirk. “But I’m willing to bet you want her back.”

  Stephen stepped into Dominic’s line of vision. “Give us a nod or something. Blink once for yes, twice for no.”

  “Of course I want her back,” Dominic said in a rusted voice, shocking himself by saying the words out loud, instead of letting them ricochet around inside his skull. “She’s my wife. She’s supposed to stay. We said vows.” Travis and Stephen made wishy-washy sounds, as if they disagreed. “What?”

  “Yeah, marriages have ups and downs,” Stephen said, obviously treading carefully. “But if a woman isn’t happy for a long period of time . . .”

  He trailed off, widening his eyes at Travis.

  “Don’t look at me. Me and Georgie aren’t getting married for months.”

  “Well, well, well,” Stephen drawled. “He’s only an expert when it’s convenient.”

  Dominic pinched the bridge of his nose and inhaled. Now that adrenaline had worn off from his wall-smashing activities, the pounding in his brain was back. “Do you two have anything useful to say, or what?” He dropped his hand. “If not, I’m going back to work.”

  “Yeah,” Travis said with a nod. “I have something useful. Go get her back. There’s a Just Us League meeting tomorrow night at Bethany’s.” He sent them both a pointed look. “Told you I had the goods. You’re welcome.”

  The words She doesn’t love me anymore were stuck in Dominic’s throat. He couldn’t say them out loud. Hearing them was terrible enough. And goddammit, on top of the horror of losing Rosie, he was embarrassed. What kind of a man lands an incredible woman like Rosie and doesn’t do enough to hold on to her?

  His jaw hardened. No. She was supposed to stay regardless. His parents weren’t necessarily close, but they respected each other. His mother depended on Dominic’s father, had always been confident in his ability to give her a comfortable life. They were a united front at the weddings, funerals, and barbeques Rosie and Dominic attended for his mother’s side of the family. Bottom line, they’d stayed together, through hard times and good. Even now, they were back to living in the old neighborhood, so they could be closer to his mother’s family in the Bronx. They’d sworn to stay together until the end and they damn well would. They didn’t even sleep in the same bedroom, but they admired each other.

  He and Rosie, they had a lot more than mutual admiration. Didn’t they?

  Some of his frustration slipped, giving way to doubt. Those nights he spent working himself into a sweat between her thighs were the greatest of his life. He would bury his face in her neck, lick her whipping pulse, and absorb the energy of her. Those cries she let out in his ear, the nail marks she left on his back . . . he’d taken those as proof that she was satisfied. Satisfied and provided for. How had he been so fucking wrong?

  At that very moment, there didn’t seem to be a way back into her life. She’d been unhappy too long—and he’d been blind to it. Dominic wasn’t even sure he could keep his shit together around Rosie. Looking her in the eye and knowing she didn’t love him anymore? He might as well go back to living in the desert, without a drop of water this time around.

  But as Dominic split a look between Travis and Stephen, he recalled the times they’d come close to losing their women. They’d gotten them back, hadn’t they? If there was anything
in this world worth fighting for, it was his wife.

  Fuck. Most of all, he just needed to look at her. Be around her. His world was off-kilter, his mental equilibrium shot to hell. So that’s what he would do. He’d go remind her that marriage was forever and he’d ask her to come home. If there was even the slightest chance it might work, he had to take it.

  Dominic swallowed hard. “What time is the meeting?”

  Chapter Four

  Rosie took a pizza cutter out of Bethany’s cutlery drawer and laid it beside the bowl of chilled dough, squaring her shoulders and preparing to create. Some might find her process crazy, but unless she really took a moment to focus on the food, she could taste her worries within the fabric of flavors. And that was a waste of good ingredients—an egregious sin.

  When she arrived at Bethany’s house last night, her friend had answered the door with a sleep mask pushed up on her forehead, blond hair sticking out in eighty directions. She’d taken one look at Rosie’s face and wordlessly led her to the upstairs guest room. No words had been exchanged, just a long hug—and that was enough to let Rosie know her friends had seen the implosion of her marriage coming a mile away.

  She didn’t know whether to be grateful or offended.

  Good thing she didn’t really have the mental energy for either.

  Making good food? She always had energy for that.

  When she’d woken up this morning, Bethany had already left for work, but thankfully she’d left a house key sitting on the kitchen counter. Since Rosie had worked the early shift at Haskel’s, she’d gotten home first, and being alone in the big, airy house had given her too much room to think about Dominic shouting her name from the garage. To combat the sound of his voice, which continued to echo in her head, she’d gone to the market and then worked out some angst making dough for her mother’s medialunas.

  Focus on the food.

  Using the pizza wheel, she cut the dough in half and made two long rectangles. She stacked one rectangle of dough on top of the other and lined up the edges, cutting the dough into triangles, humming as she made strategic slits and molded them into crescent shapes, placing them one by one on a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet. Then she set them on the windowsill to rise in the sunshine, the same way her mother used to do.

  There, her mom would say. Now we sit, have a coffee, and savor our hard work.

  God, she missed that woman. She’d had a tried-and-true method for everything. On Sundays, we wash and set our hair. Mondays are for cleaning and going through the mail. On Thursday evenings, we make asado—enough to get us through the weekend and share with the neighbors if they drop by. And all the while, Rosie’s father would smile indulgently, his fingers flipping through a car magazine or twisting a tool into a car part. It didn’t seem fair that people who’d been so rooted to this earth with their routines could just be gone. A stroke for her mother, and weeks later, her grieving father simply didn’t wake up one morning. So fast and jarring, but Rosie took comfort now in the knowledge they were together again.

  The front door of the house opened and Bethany walked in, a camel-colored leather briefcase tucked smartly beneath one arm. “Why, honey. You cooked.”

  “I’m making breakfast, actually,” Rosie said, gently poking one of her medialunas in the side to check the texture. “These will taste great in the morning with your coffee.”

  “I’m looking forward to it,” Bethany murmured, hopping up on one of the stools surrounding the marble island. “How was your day?”

  Rosie rolled a shoulder and went to preheat the oven, setting it at 395—an important component of her mother’s crescent rolls. Don’t pressure the dough to grow up too fast, Rosie. “It was good. I even managed to sell a bottle of Le Squirt Bon Bon. As a joke, obviously, but it still counts in the eyes of the commission gods. What about yours?”

  “Fine.” Brow furrowed, Bethany plucked at the arm of her blouse. “Making things pretty as usual. You know the drill.”

  “Still wanting to ditch your swatch samples and swing that sledgehammer?”

  “Like a motherfucker.” Bethany gave her a tight smile. “I’d rather talk about you, though. How are you doing?”

  Again, she thought of Dominic and how panicked he’d looked when she started to pack. “I don’t feel great. I probably won’t for a long time, but . . . leaving was the right thing to do, Bethany. We’re married and we don’t even speak to each other.”

  Bethany shook her head slowly. “You used to, though, right? In high school, the two of you always had your heads together, whispering about something.”

  “We used to talk constantly, yeah. Where we would travel when we made some money. We’d talk about our dream home on the water. All the parties we would host in our big backyard.” Swallowing hard, Rosie took a bowl out of the cabinet and cracked an egg inside, beating it with a dollop of milk, preparing to make the egg wash to brush over the medialunas. “When he came back from overseas, I don’t think I noticed right away how quiet he’d become. I had my mother. We were always in the kitchen together and . . . he’d been gone so long, his silence didn’t register—I was just so happy to have him home safe. And then she was gone and it was so quiet. All the time.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Bethany slipped off her stool and went to the wine fridge beneath the counter, selecting a bottle of white and twisting off the cap. “God, it’s been almost four years since your parents passed, Ro. That’s a long time to be drowning in silence.”

  “Well, I’m definitely not drowning now,” Rosie said in a rush, hoping to ease the pressure in her chest. And that was the truth. Ever since she, Bethany, and Georgie had formed the Just Us League, not only was she surrounded with supportive women and a shitload of town gossip, but her dreams of opening a restaurant had been rekindled. Transformed from the pipe dream she’d set aside to reality. They’d signed her up for one of those crowdsourcing websites and people had donated. Invested in her dream. Or at least given her a push to get started.

  Rosie wasn’t sure how her mother would feel about benefiting from the kindness of strangers. Or if she would even see it that way, as opposed to charity. Growing up biracial in the predominantly white town of Port Jefferson, Rosie never had any friends who looked like her. Her father, Maurice, was African American, and her mother, Cecilia, was from Argentina, so they didn’t resemble her friends’ parents, either. Even unspoken, there always seemed to be a dividing line between them and everyone else. People were friendly, but not so friendly that they might accidentally invite real friendship. She’d witnessed the disappointment that treatment bred in her parents, whether or not they ever said it out loud.

  Rosie had been aware of the Castles and many of the Just Us League members for a long time, but only enough to say hello on Main Street or if they happened to pass through her section at the mall. That dividing line between her and everyone else had remained for a while after her parents had passed, and it had taken some courage to step over it. Accepting the kindness of her friends only sat right with her now because she knew—and had experienced—how the Castles and the women of the club went out of their way for everyone. Rosie herself went out of her way, right alongside them, and it dulled any possibilities of taking a handout. She would do the same for them. Especially if someone needed a place to stay.

  “Thanks again for letting me crash here until I figure out my next move.”

  “Stay as long as you want,” Bethany said, pouring two glasses of wine and handing one to Rosie. “I’m having my lawyer draw up a nondisclosure agreement about my snoring, however. You don’t mind signing, do you?”

  Rosie laughed. “I can keep your secret if you don’t tell anyone I groan about my tired feet like a ninety-year-old.”

  “Deal.” Bethany’s smiling mouth met the rim of her wineglass for a sip. “Speaking of next moves, where are we at on opening your restaurant? Which I’m going to eat at five nights a week. Maybe six. Any more thoughts on that?”

  Any more thoughts
about it? She’d thought about opening her own place nonstop for almost a decade. Along with their plans to own a big, beautiful house and eventually have children, she and Dominic had talked about her dream of cooking for the public. Something her mother had always wanted to do—a desire she’d never had the chance to fulfill, thanks to money being tight while Rosie was growing up.

  God, she and Dominic had entertained big dreams.

  A forever home to grow old in, a family, lucrative careers.

  Her biggest dream had always been Dominic, though. Sure, they’d settled on a smaller house that needed a lot of repairs and didn’t have enough room to expand their family. Sure, the money for her restaurant was taking a lot longer to save. So long that they’d stopped talking about it altogether, the way they’d stopped discussing everything else under the sun. But if she’d had their love, she couldn’t help but think it would have been enough.

  Something sharp moved in Rosie’s chest and she took a sip of wine. “I’m almost there.” She took a deep breath. “Just waiting for the dust to settle and then . . . leap.”

  Bethany laid a hand on her shoulder. “You’re not leaping alone.” She pressed her lips together, like she was holding in a secret. “You know . . . Georgie called me today. She’s had not one, not two, but three of her birthday party clients ask if you’re open to catering their parties. Word is getting around, woman.” She drank deeply of her wine and sighed. “I’m basically housing a future celebrity chef.”

  Rosie let out a long breath and allowed herself to feel the stirring of satisfaction. If she combined the Just Us League donations and the money her parents had left her, her dream of owning a restaurant was beginning to come into focus. Unfortunately, that dream was still difficult to fathom without her husband in the frame.

  Give it time.

  Not too much time, though. She’d waited long enough.

  She clinked her glass with Bethany’s and steeled her spine. “I’m going to start working on menu ideas.”